SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- As strong Pacific storms continue to batter Northern and Central California over the weekend, 600 Pacific Gas and Electric Company crews are working around the clock to restore service to customers and repair damage to electrical equipment throughout the utility's territory.
Since the first storm hit Friday morning, PG&E crews have restored service to more than 1.3 million of the 1.8 million electric customers who lost power. PG&E has contracted dozens of additional crews from the Pacific Northwest, Nevada, and Southern California to help assess outages and restore power as quickly possible.
As of 4:00 p.m. Saturday evening, there are still about 395,000 PG&E customers without power throughout Northern and Central California, mostly in the North Coast and Sierra Nevada regions. About 100,000 of the utility's customers without power are in the greater Bay Area, largely in Marin County, the Peninsula, and Santa Cruz Mountains.
"We thank our customers for their patience," said Mark Johnson, vice president of electric operations and engineering at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. "Working as quickly and safely as possible, our crews have restored power to three-quarters of the customers impacted so far. However, severe weather has caused widespread damage to our equipment and many locations have been inaccessible due to high winds, floods, downed trees, mudslides and snow. This means that many customers will be out of power through the weekend and even beyond."
High winds and heavy rain knocked out power to more than 9,500 locations throughout the utility's 74,000 square mile service area. Enough power lines to stretch from San Francisco to Bakersfield were downed by falling trees or other storm-related causes. In addition to damaged equipment, hundreds more outages have been caused by strong winds slapping power lines together, or tree limbs falling across lines and tripping circuit-breakers.
The difficult weather conditions have delayed outage assessments and restoration of electric service in some areas. Power for most of the utility's customers is expected to be restored by Sunday night. Restoration could take into early next week, as late as Wednesday, in parts of the North Coast, the northern and central Sierra foothills, the San Francisco Peninsula south to the Central Coast, and the greater San Jose area.
Additional crews are being dispatched to these areas to speed repairs. However, continued storms could result in new outages or the extension of existing outages throughout PG&E's territory.
Below are tips for customers weathering the current winter storm: -- Treat any downed power line as if it is "live" or carrying electric current. Do not touch or try to move it - and keep children and animals away. Report downed power lines and other electric emergencies immediately by calling 911 and PG&E's customer service line at 1-800-PGE-5002. -- If you have a standby generator, make sure that it's installed safely and inform PG&E to avoid risking damage to your property and endangering PG&E line workers who may be working on nearby power lines. -- Never use barbeques or charcoal indoors to heat your home in order to avoid the risk of fire and carbon monoxide poisoning. -- If your power goes out, turn off or even unplug all electric appliances. Otherwise, when power is restored, several appliances may come back on at once and overload your circuits or hot appliances may come on while you're away or asleep and pose a fire hazard. Leave on a single lamp to alert you when power returns. Turn your appliances back on one at a time when conditions return to normal. -- Customers should report power outages to PG&E by calling our outage information line at 1-800-PGE-5002. Customers can also call this number to receive updated information about an existing power outage in their area.
For more information about PG&E, including storm-related information, please visit our web site at http://www.pge.com/
